It’s so interesting what happens to people when they start to prepare their photos for a scanning project. Pictures that were not even a part of their thinking just days earlier or had once been moments a photographer captured for their family so long ago have become quite critical.
I have been trying to figure out why those important photos are not displayed on mantles or in digital frames above the fireplace or as part of slide shows available to family and friends on Flickr or other sites. And I believe I know the answer. While the present is with us day in and day out, the past is only with us when we open the door and let it in. However, during those moments when the past does come calling, it is a strong, almost irresistible force that must be reckoned with.
We’ve all gotten songs in our heads that we remembered we liked back then. I’ve spent hours trying to find it online, or even find different versions of it. I didn’t have it in my collection because for years, it wasn’t important enough to have. But then, it became part of my thinking and it couldn’t be denied until it was located, downloaded and made part of my collection.
We have visions of our parents, or our early friends or aunts and uncles and even our kids when they were little. While we do keep many of them in our thinking, they are the images we have chosen as representative of these people. But compare that image of your Mom in your head with that photo of her with her friends when she was 18 and living in Brooklyn. They are quite different visions and without seeing those photos, we’d fall back onto a representative image path we have of them—instead of the multi-faceted road they actually walked on,
The late singer-songwriter Steve Goodman had a song called “My Old Man” where he talks about his father not long after he died. One of the verses was about his Dad in his early days—fighting in World War II and the things he did before he met his Mom and shortly after became “My old man.”
They all had full lives above and beyond the one we share or shared with them. Their photographs capture them in times that we might not have been a part of but were a big part of their lives nevertheless. There were also moments, captured on film, that express early days in their relationship with us. I have photos of my parents when they only knew me for just a year or two. No long history yet. No conflicts. No lessons, lectures, generation gaps, estrangements, reinvigorated relationships, them growing older, meeting their grandkids and finally the slowing down and ultimately their passing. They are fresh and real and are big parts of our relationships with them.
All these images are there. Right in those boxes they way they were (and many still are in my basement). My kids never knew their grandfather so I’m so lucky to be able to point to him and tell them about his smile or his compassion and how much fun he was. But more than that, there’s nothing like my children pointing to his picture and saying ”Gee, you smile just like him” or “was he as kind as he looked?”
Those photos of your family are in your basement subject, to the humidity or in your attic, subject to the dryness or in albums, falling victim to the chemicals in the plastic you thought would protect them. Please scan them and preserve them, either via the Scan Zone or through some other way so they won’t fade or be destroyed or rendered useless by their storage. When you finally do think of them and do want to show them, they will, at that moment, be the most important portrayal of the past you have. Keep them alive.
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